an old jumper

I knitted this jumper (sweater) back in the dark ages, before I had a blog. I finished it in 2003 and I think I worked on it (on and off) for about three years.

taken in artificial light but reasonably true to colour

It was inspired by Kaffe Fassett but is not one of his designs - it's one of my own. The theory is the diagonal patches of light colour would cause the eye to travel up or down rather than across as horizontal stripes would. I wanted something more interesting than stripes anyway!

I'm proud of this jumper but I don't love it. It's very thick and heavy; it's made mostly from 8ply (DK) weight yarn - with some 5ply (sportweight) and some 12 ply (chunky). It's mostly wool with a little bit of mohair.

I don't wear it very often - whenever I do, someone always wants to talk to me about it - it's not a jumper I can wear when I want to be "invisible"!

Now that I've seen the photos - it looks more like a man's jumper, doesn't it?

Today it formed the centrepiece of a workshop I gave on "colour theory for knitters". How did it go? I felt it went okay but it fell a bit flat! But you'd have to ask the participants for the real story, wouldn't you?


Can you guess how many different yarns are in the jumper?

knitting (and a little crochet)

After all, that's what this blog is supposed to be about, isn't it?

Warning: photo heavy post


There have been beanies

Moda Vera Cynthia Blue

Moda Vera Cynthia Forest

three in this colourway; the colours are much darker - rich plum and burgundy

Schoeller and Stahl Skyline Light (hand-dyed) - thanks Leonie

and scarves

two of these

dropped garter stitch

Turbulent Indigo scarf  (Rav link) in donated acrylic "mohair"

DD knitted this one!

Journey Scarf (Rav link) knitted in Moda Vera Cynthia grey

this one is currently on the needles - a sample for my entrelac workshop

and ladies' mitts (pattern modified from Cleckheaton's Handknits to Wrap and Adorn)

and blankets (afghans) approximately 70 inches by 40 inches (175cm by 100cm).

this one is in the finishing process (lots of ends to sew in)

this one is hibernating until I remember to buy a bigger hook

this one is currently on the needles 200 stitches, one row per colour

this one is my "sample" for the garter stitch entrelac workshop I am tutoring next month

 and one toddler's jumper (sweater) which was "homework" to practise Fair Isle technique

children's jumpers

Over the past few months I have knitted several child-size jumpers [sweaters] for charity. I have been practising and refining my knitting-in-the-round technique and designing some successes and some failures.

One of those failures, although I didn't realise it when I posted about it back in June, was a sweater-without-shoulders. Thanks C. for your honesty; you made me look at the jumper again and of course you were right. Having started from the top down I was reluctant to fix it but it was very obvious that it couldn't be worn in that state so, after some thinking time while the jumper lay in the naughty corner, I came up with a solution. I snipped one stitch just above the armhole and slowly, carefully and painstakingly took out all the stitches in that row. It took a couple of hours but I finally separated the yoke from the body. I then picked up all the stitches of the body, ripped out the yoke and proceeded to knit a new one paying carefully attention to EZ's numbers!

Here is the same jumper - version #2.


This jumper has a sister [also knitted top-down]. Here she is:


Her very plain raglan cousin in 5ply acrylic:


And her very fancy cousin:


who, of course, insists in me showing the detail!